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First proper job was working a few evenings a week in a video shop. Pay was rubbish, but it wasn't too bad as you could just sit there watching films waiting for customers.
From there I got a job at Olympus Sport in Brent Cross shopping centre and from there to the heady heights of Primark in Kilburn high St. That was before Primark was well known; around late '94/95.
Sounds like some of you had some pretty interesting jobs.
My first job was a part-time one whilst at 6th form stacking shelves at our local Gateway supermarket . It was a good introduction into petty office politics and how to be exploited. We had to stay behind after the store closed and 'face' the shelves for usually two hours without being paid for it. After working two evenings and a Saturday a week I was able to practically blow all the money away on Saturday night in the pub!
16yr old junior leader in the army that was an eye opener!
Cleaner at an Army base.
Bregante - that fits the timescale when my mate "Neil Espley" worked there, his stories from the early days of R1 are priceless. He's now sunning it up out in Cyprus..... Lucky bugger!
I started as a checkout lass in a supermarket at 18 (first months wage was £94),then bakery/deli assistant and shelf stacker. Great times. Thinking back I think everyone under 20 was nursing a hangover most Saturday shifts. Great times with a great bunch!
Lifeguard, which was fun and pretty well paid for a 16 year old.
Games developer for a little software house in Sheffield (when I was doing my BTEC in computer studies). Great job, I was a USELESS code developer tho. Ended up copying disks. So 500 blank floppies (!), 1 master disk. Open drive, copy, close drive, put copied disc into folder, start again. Except one Night I did it the wrong way round and overwrote all of the master copies.
A good metaphor for my future career really 😉
served a four year apprenticeship in a ship repair yard.
Introduced me to hard work at an early stage, met and learnt a lot from craftsmen. Most of those craft skills have gone now, blacksmith, coppersmiths, boilermakers, riggers, engineers.
Long hours, no health and safety (apart from the government sign at the clocking in station).
A good metaphor for my future career really
Please don't tell me you're now in the poisons and antidotes industry now 🙂
Beater or glass collector, can't remember which was first, before sailing to the lofty heights of caravan cleaner
Apprentice mechanical craftsman at the Royal Aerospace Establishment, Farnborough.
Order picker in the warehouse at Argos over Christmas. Not overly exciting compared to some here.
Next was restaurant staff at a hotel. I was at there on and off for nearly 10 years, working in pretty much every area of hotel and hospitality work. I absolutely loved it and were the hours and pay not crap, would still be there now. I took so much from that job that I still have now, 10 years on, it was a brilliant introduction to working life.
part time microfilm operator. sounds like a spy job? nah. Bradford Council get thousands of planning applications every year, and back in the day they were all on mahoosive sheets of paper. For archive purposes, it was our job to take pictures of these plans and when the developed negatives came back, insert them into thin plastic sleeves and make duplicates. These would then go off to the central library for the public to view
We also did parish records - Registers of Births, Deaths & Marriages. Some were quite interesting, the oldest I think I did was 17th Century and recorded an earthquake. in Bradford. IIRC
Never had a paper round, but did a milk round from age 14-18. Saturday mornings and holidays. Worked 4am til 9.30. Boss had the small holding g and dairy behind our house, did all sorts of poor paid jobs for him, delivering leaflets (he was a printer as well), horticulture. He was a proper old country bloke, started ploughing with horses before the war, told great stories.
I would get up at 3.30, have breakfast, start at 4.00, do the first round, nip home for a second breakfast at 7.00, do the second round, get home at 9.30, go to bed, sleep till lunchtime. Last call of the round was to collect the money from Mrs X at number 108. She always answered the door wearing very little. Before the word MILF was invented.
In my sixth form years, my then GF lived on the latter half of the round. She would let me know if her parents were going out that morning so I could replan my "sleeping" arrangements.
Was a really hard, fun time, in all weathers, for the minimum agricultural wage.
waiter in an indian resturaunt, came home after 7 hours work with 25 quid smelling of onions. bad times
Assistant Scientific Officer for RARDE (MoD) doing Non-Destructive Evaluation on explosives - basically x-raying them. Started in 1989 and was paid £7,500 per year.
Best job I've ever had.
Job at McDonalds - best job I ever had! Me and 10 mates running a store at 16!
Worked at Presto supermarket while still at school, good days when one evening and a Saturday shift paid for all the underage drinking you needed.
After school then got into an engineering apprenticeship for a grand total of 55GBP a week take home.
Assistant Scientific Officer for RARDE (MoD) doing Non-Destructive Evaluation on explosives - basically x-raying them. Started in 1989 and was paid £7,500 per year.
Did they let you work form home?
I'd have been blowing up everything in site.....
Working for greater manchester council for voluntary service. £48 a week, enough for me to leave home, cross the pennines and sort myself a room in a student house in manc (£10 a week) and to save £240 over 6 fairly grim months. My dad gave me another £200 and that was enough to spend the next four and half months hitching round europe and turkey, with a month on ios. Not grim at all. This was what was not called in those days a 'gap year'.
Main task was compiling a handbook/directory of Oldham's voluntary organisations/services, which meant spending a couple of days a week in a weird dilapidated terraced house by oldham bus station, on my own half the time tho went to the pub next door with a ex-hippie guy doing a sociology phd involving one of these groups. Strange days.
Met someone who was meant to be my supervisor a day or so in, and he said something about sending a questionnaire round these various voluntary groups from some lists I could get hold of. As I'd nowt to do on my third afternoon I just wrote a questionnaire out on paper, got it typed up and copied, stuffed a few hundred envelopes, job's a guddun. To the surprise of my supervisors, who'd envisaged this as a project for the first three months. (These days I'd convene a questionnaire design committee with an expert advisory subgroups on design and piloting, and overarching methodological development panel. Keep a lot of people busy for a good few months.) Anyway, it meant I got to see the thing printed. So when I started uni in October I told people I'd written a book and traveled the world. This was 1980. Christ I was a ****.
The end.
xx
editing to add - that's the first time I've been censored! Can I get away with Was****er? Okay, how about Was****er? Ah, there we go...
First proper summer job -
Sorting odd shoes at McKenzie clothing in their warehouse in Pudding Char in Newcastle.
They had this huge upper level of the warehouse that had odd returned shoes in it, I spent a few weeks sorting them into sizes so they could be sold at their shops, which were shutting down, bakrupt and baliffs.
I was told near the end of the matching just to get them as close as possible - so 10s and 11s, 9 and 8s odd pairs, and then eventually just put them together.
I then helped shut down shops around the country, driving around, uninsured, in one of the managers cars to Leeds, Manchester, Glasgow and Birmingham.
Getting chased by the baliffs at one store, manchester I think.
The van with all the stuff vanishing on route to their central warehouse to reappear lighter, as they hid stuff from the ballifs.
I was told the owners brother owned foot locker and wouldn't bail him out.
1st paying job was working at the local garden centre digging up/cutting down Christmas trees. Bloody hard work as I wasn't allowed to use the chainsaw as I was only 12 😯
Working in a bike shop - Saturday boy
Dave Ferguson Cycles, Skipton 1988-91
Still there afaik
Working in a bike shop - Saturday boy
Dave Ferguson Cycles, Skipton 1988-91Still there afaik
You're not sure whether you're still there or not? 😉
Croupier in a casino, dealing roulette. I hated literally every single minute of it. Also the most mentally taxing job I've ever had (I'm currently a Finance Director..) - you have to look at piles of winning chips and calculate (accurately) things like (23*35)+(24*17)+(31*8)+(14*11), in your head, in a few seconds, hundreds of times over the course of (if working a double shift) 14 hours, less breaks. I used to frequently invite "Place your bets" in my sleep as well.
And deal with immensely rude customers, of course.
I ironed skirts for M & S
Living the dream.
FWIW it was piece rate and if you were crap they sacked you*
As I was a student I could not sign on getting sacked meant I could get the Dole without waiting till September
I was living the dream in thatchers britain 😉
* I lasted till weds dinner having never ever touched an iron in my life.
Car insurance sales inbound.